Peace

I shook hands with the man
Who welcomed me to dinner.
What an aging kindly face that is
Steady and serene like the slopes of Mayon.
The thought passed like a bright messenger
As I stepped out to brave chill December winds.

I said Thank you and Good evening,
Uncertain if those could ever be enough.
He said goodbye once more, then added,
His face partly hidden by the door, "Peace be with you."
What old confusing words! What do I reply?
I couldn't lie, I couldn't give what I didn't have.

I felt like an utter cheat because I knew
His words were as honest as a desperate prayer.
They somehow had power to make it true:
Peace in some measure will come to me one day
But now, what could one give a happy man
Whose family's beauty, whole and young?

I could only blurt out Thank you, you too.
As I walked away, awed by that kindly aging face.
What tired words, repeated, and turning impotent.
Like a losing bet, thrown in at the last dissipating moment,
Desperately, into the widening gaps of parting,
While the heart whispers Come on, come on, may it be so!

Let me tell you about hate

Write about what you know
All the good books on writing say
So let me tell you about hate
That's when anger gets stuck in your throat
So malignant and massive you nearly choke on it
If you don't spit it out in a scream
Or channel it to your clenched fists ready for pounding
It's when you deign not to look at her
Almost afraid you'd soon be guilty of murder
It's to refuse even to hear an apology
That's just salty tears falling on hot wounds
Only incisive hurt answers hurt, acid insult insult
Touch is definitely out of the question
Your skin would creep upon contact
--And then there's the danger of mellowing
You need to sustain hate by letting it lie
And accumulate like stubborn weed or fungi
Their colors deepening and hardening like scabs
Hate's also saying Throw yourself out the window
For all I care. Go on right ahead. Go on.
Half-daring and half-scared but meaning it nonetheless.
You feel as though all the earnest bitterness
In the world inhabits your shaking body then
And your feverish head would burst any minute
And all you see is a white blurry light
And vague shrinking figures you want to seize and smash

A romantic fragment

Barbauld is that rare moderate radical
Mockingly provoking the Muses to stoop down
And look upon the mousy energies of women on washing-day.
Wollstonecraft: articulate and passionate rational lover
Social critic and manly defender of woman,
Great grandmother of monstrous change.
Blake--a true artist for times of innocence and age,
Visionary of the white Lamb and the dark Tyger
Of children and God and his Church and their henchmen.
Wordsworth, you still Bard of the Lake District,
Happy with your daffodils, lucky with your Dorothy,
True lover of nature and your memories, you sentimental fool!
Coleridge--that the dreamy, drugged conservative idealist,
Magic priest of savage Asia and mesmerizing ancient seamen,
Prisoner of the nightmares of love, religion, and pain.

On my way to the train or heartbreak express

Clutching a train ticket close to my chest
I  raced to beat the surge of seconds.
I almost invaded a glowing halo
Surrounding a boy scowling
And a girl standing trembling before him.
I didn't get a glimpse of her face,
But I knew, as if from memory, that her eyes
Were glistening and ready to speak.
Go away, whispered the boy loudly,
Or I'll push you, he added, savagely
In that familiar alien tongue that still pricks.
They seemed small to me, those two, alone,
Impervious to the rush and joys of the world.
Yet I wondered how youth can bear
Such anger, a typhoon enormous and fierce.
I thought the boy grew monstrous,
His face revealed the gravity of every word.
Have I forgotten I'm not the only one
Who can harbor such rancor for another?
Then the girl, quietly, and on the verge of shrinking,
Responded, I already said sorry, please,
Heartfelt, hurt, hoping, and hopelessly.
What hateful act could she have committed,
What unforgivable harm inflicted,
What piercing words swung to stab,
To provoke that height of anger?
The shriveling way she apologized,
You'd think she'd offended God almighty,
That the world would end there and then,
That the earth would crack open its jaws
And devour her into eternal damnation.
I asked my tired tried heart if it's still capable
Of that kind of sorrow for withheld forgiveness.
It still throbs but has learned to love silence.
In a couple of heartbeats I was gone,
In the pursuit of lost time and a life elsewhere.
Ga weg! Ga weg! rang in my ears as I pressed on.
It's done, I thought, a body was pushed away.
The halo was broken, the circle was complete.
My wildly pulsating heart swelled and murmured.
Then I wondered why my train seemed impossibly far away.

For one, please

I’m alone, this woman, blessed with wide wild eyes,

A shy resigned mouth, and endless unruly hair,

Tells me softly--intimately? Perhaps pleadingly?

I want to reply, positively sensing an akin soul,

Me too and I see the sadness on your forehead

And in the deepening lines on your glowing face:

They trace absences and impatient impotent waiting

For impossible miracles of human proximity.

And I hate it too: the silly seriousness of attempting

To desperately convince yourself of self-sufficiency,

While you walk towards the busy gray of home-school-work,

Aware of the futility and necessity of self-deception.

But the lost-looking woman adds, by way of hesitation:

One table please, for me only, is this possible, please?

Certainly, I say, this one here’s free, please take a seat.

She does, seeming happy, as I eagerly offer her the menu,

Taking care to spare a smile and to look her straight in the eye.

Yet I remove myself, embarrassed, to wait for a sign to approach,

For she’s now totally absorbed, intensely studying each page,

As though she’s diving into the eyes of a new-found lover,

Searching, expecting, promising, oblivious, and gloriously alone.

(This poem's inspired by a simple scene I witnessed in a restaurant. A guy walked in and the first thing he said to the waitress who received him was "I'm alone." I thought then, what a strange and sad thing to say.)

This is how you lose her

First, let's begin with the basics: never ever wash the dishes

--remember king of one's own castle? Take that to heart.

That by itself might prove sufficient, but just to be sure:

don't clean up after yourself, never spare a compliment

or any kind word, don't fix the bed when you get up or

set the table or cook--that's what women are for right?

Be bored when she's dragging you into stores.

Never do anything with her but sit in front of the TV

and make sure you're the one holding the remote.

Absorb yourself with work: nothing is more important.

Keep yourself busy with your toys: nothing is more important.

She may never comprehend but she will come to understand.

Don't ask her about her folks or her idiot siblings.

Don't like her friends, you have plenty of your own after all.

Harden your heart and be prudent in doling out sympathy:

She has to know and understand that you do things your own way

And she can take it or leave it, your way or the highway.

Most importantly, lie boldly and remorselessly about problems

and money and yourself and other women and girls.

You deserve your own life and ignorance will spare her.

This is necessary to maintain peace in your house and in

the life that stretches from your goodness to her.
Practice makes perfect so start out with little white lies

until you grow into the expertise of a politico or preacher man.

Now when it comes to love, devour her, all of her.

Eat her like you do your slab of meat, consume her like beer.

Take your fill, her pleasure is yours, and she’ll thank you for it.

Never look into her eyes while you’re at it, she’ll see you,

and your softness, that’s certain, and you wouldn't want that.

Do all of these things with deliberation, tact, and skill.

It will take her a while to get it and get used to how things must be.

She will eventually, and if she persists in loving you, use anger:

Hammer the table with your fists and let her face distort

and her body shrink in acute understanding and fear.

At first and for a time, she’ll be patient and bear it all in silence.

But never fail in repeating all these things each God-given day

and trust me, I know, I swear, she’ll finally leave you alone.

Yesterday's news

Faces we are or food for your hungry TV
and bleeps on other bright buzzing screens
We're pricked by some disaster or other
and we bleed and shed tears and skin
Brown, black, and of all the other fading hues.
We are still open mouths and speaking eyes
Punctured, nude, exhausted, and dripping
For all to ogle at: Ye mighty despair!
We are proof that the heart within you beats
We are the salve for a rudely roused conscience
We are testaments to the atheist's gods
Through our deaths and the remnants of our lives
You will have your most exquisite release
You too will shed skin, blood, and tears
We are as real as we are far away
We are the other moving blockbuster
We are as enduring as a scandal
We are with you as long as today lasts
We might be you someday, but don't worry,
Tomorrow, surely, you will have moved on
Tomorrow, surely, we live, leave, and will happen again
Tomorrow, surely, we are still yesterday's news.

You keep Them at bay

Older now, you can deprive sleep of your company.
You stare only for a minute into the persistent darkness,
As you gently blow away the smoke clawing at your face,
Rising boldly from the black pool of your coffee.
Then machine-like, you begin all your loved ones' day
By gingerly putting all the stubborn things in their place:
Blankets over bodies, pans on the warm stove,
Soft bread in the toaster, a shining fruit in a bag,
Unrelenting dust in the bin, undying trash stowed away.
Once your bodies are gone, replenished with dairy
And toast and fruit and lugging handy jugs and bags,
You clean up the remains, piously, not missing a crumb,
And feel the bed's down and fold the still glowing blankets
You cannot help but cherish even if only for a minute,
As your heart is infected by a thousand other pressing thoughts
Of what to be soughtboughtreadwrittencookedbrought,
The mighty flighty feeling that even if this be a losing game

You've half-won today and kept Them all at bay.

(I dedicate this poem to all parents who try.)

Leuven

White and Gothic the Town Hall stands there
Immovably silent like sorrow
Impassive Jack hammers the bell
Intimating Time and his kin
Clouds hang like dimming curtains
For keeping within to oneself
The Great Market square is bare
But for a few stragglers wafting by
Cloaked and hugging themselves
Out of the pits of the Longest Bar
No chatter sighs, no songs cheer
The Kotmadam rests disturbed
Ah Leuven, you're for leaving!
Built up to be bombed
Sprung up to be split
A city that embraces so tightly
You'd soon want her to let you go.

Mark my words, my dearest

Never forget beloved:
The distance may be daunting,
Planes and trains punctually late,
Slow people blocking my way,
Disasters waiting to strike,
Failure might be built-in too,
For gods may have other plans,
And you may spurn my love's fire,
Out of blind timidity.
Yet I swear on what's human,
Against all morals and laws,
With time and patience as friends,
I have ways to get to you.

Yolanda and other perfect disasters

Feeds are buzzing, scrambling to be the first to relay

Super typhoon Yolanda is just hours away from landfall

She has, somebody said on Twitter too, reached perfection

At such and such devastating speed and impressive enormity

"Wow epic satellite pics man," came the quick compliment 

Wait, taste, and see our walls and wills be inundated with pleas 

Please please Abba spare our kin in the homeland oceans away

Please please Abba spare the brown masses of our compatriots

Ever poor and hardened, steadfast, unbowing and resigned

In the name of our Lord who declined divinity to take flesh,

Was dastardly kissed and met gruesome death on the cross, 

Like royalty, dived into hell and ascended to the clouds of glory

For to lift us, wretched as we are, drenched in the waters of sin.

We pray to Thee and Thy bloody Heart, once more like last year,

Polish the Pearl with torrents, but save us your flock, spectacularly.

Amen amen amen! And follow us ye faithful and Like Comment or Share.

Thus far

April was born in Bulacan, a Philippine province famed for its writers and poets. The second of three children, his family lived in the countryside until his parents’ fortunes brought them to the margins of the capital region, where April attended a local school and played games like tumbang preso, agawan base, and patintero on the hot streets of Novaliches with other neighborhood kids. After six years, encouraged by his mother and imitating his older brother with little reflection, he entered a minor (high school) seminary in Makati. For years he endured the strict daily routine under the watchful eyes of stern clerical authorities and hostile upperclassmen. Despite the growing realization that the priestly life did not and never would agree with him, upon graduation he moved on to a college seminary in Quezon City. Though he learned to love philosophy and applied himself to his studies, his true feelings expressed themselves in his blatant disregard for seminary rules. While he was allowed to continue his studies in the same school, he had to leave the religious community after a stay of one and a half years. He has, nevertheless, rather fond memories of that place where he forged friendships with simpler and happier people who taught him genuine love for the poor.

Thinking (erroneously it was to become evident later on) that he wanted to go to law school and believing himself not yet suitably prepared for that, April decided to first attend graduate school.  The difficult choice between UP and Ateneo was settled when the latter’s philosophy department gave him the chance to pursue an MA while working as a teaching assistant. Coming from a more modest background and having always been acutely aware of this, the change in environment was frightening and bewildering at the outset. He did his best to fit in and gave himself over to work and philosophy. Studying under luminaries like Ferriols, Dy, and Calasanz, not to mention working with other teachers gifted with true and deep afición, his days then were filled with epiphanies—sudden, hard-earned, or generously shared. After a few years and upon the completion of his MA, April started teaching with the department. It was also around this time that other momentous decisions and life-changing events occurred: he got married and became a father.  The happiness of that period was accompanied by the growing burdens of work, the challenges of starting a family, and the stirrings of ambition. Foreign shores were calling and April responded eagerly.  An almost impersonal email from Belgium telling him of admission to the Higher Institute of Philosophy and the grant of a PhD scholarship signaled a decisive turn in his life.

Medical issues, the necessary effort to adjust to a comfortable but heavily grey time and space, illusions and distractions, episodes of madness, self-doubt, and an inborn restlessness all mixed together with the concomitant difficulties of family life and the pursuit of a doctorate abroad. The scholarship ran out, the agonies and despair have passed and made their mark. Yes, the dissertation had been written and defended (in February 2013), but there is at this very moment no clear and grand telos in sight. In the meantime, April still lives in Leuven, Belgium with his son Isaac, studying literature in Antwerp, sustaining himself by bartending, translating texts from Dutch and French into English, and teaching philosophy and religion. Throughout the years, April has been writing poems in English and Filipino and now he’s also trying his hand at fiction, still in search of a vision, speaking in a voice that's gradually emerging and becoming more and more his own. 

S/he's yours

Isn't it funny how you see someone

Speaking with pure and clear conviction

Or biking past on a carefree day

And they're gone from your mind like a cloud

Then you two come close enough to kiss

Randomly on some bright street corner 

The unseen switch flicks, then you do see

That here s/he is. You are here. S/he's yours.

The heart's fateful judgment is decreed

It commands You, stop here, with him/her

Out there, are many, but s/he is one

Whether the word's yes, no, never, s/he's yours.

Cross-examination

You used to self-summarize yourself

as cheerful like a favorite color

like a beloved childhood pet

What the fuck happened to you

When did the cold take over your heart

When did you become afraid of conversation

Of nearness

Of (wo)men's words

And the stares of children?

When did you force yourself into submission

When did you give up your voice

When did you stop trying?

You didn't have things to say then

But you did utter words like a prophet

Half understood most likely and heart-felt

And now you're mute and meek and cursed

When did life become a burden

A kind of frightful passing freak show

An event you've been excluding yourself from

When did you start sleeping

On your own stage?

How did you lose it?

The Existentialist rebellion.

The Cartesian certainty.

That Ancient sense of wonder.

The Faith that sought to understand?

When did the disintegration begin?

How did you catch the disease of despair?

When will it end if it ever does? 

When did you lose yourself?

When did you lose youth?

You feel young, forever, don't you?

And yet here you are

A Frankenstein monster 

Of an aching body, a stoic-cynical soul,
Of age and lethargy,

And a still oversensitive heart.

Don't you wish

Don't you wish fervently sometimes

That your life--this one and only--was a movie:

A bold black and white western 

Or a good old tragic romantic flick,

Where characters are vibrant because

braver, lonelier, lovelier, inhuman, 

Where emotions seem real and intense

And the everyday events in people's lives

are infinitely more interesting than yours,

And love is impossible to grab but there,

And death, however unwanted and tragic, 

Is always triumphant and memorable,

Because the thing is, the thing is,

The love, the life you crave is simpler

--Good and boring even, some would say,

And the sadness you feel is ordinary,

And constant,

And painfully human.

In the end, they are all as remarkable

As one fallen colored leaf in autumn,

Another stabbing cold day in winter,

One more grey cloud passing in the sky.

days like this

all you seem to do is walk 

you're lost in the paradox of traversing an infinite distance

your feet, machine like, obstinately carry you forward

while your mind is effectively swarmed and pulled back

to somewhere else with those inescapable someones

whose names and faces prick your most invisible parts

and you bleed and you die one of those thousand deaths

that you desperately defy with work and alcohol and selfish loves

all you seem to do is forget

you're trapped in the oblivion of all blessed contentment

your mind's arms grope for something unmoving

while your gasping heart whispers simple surrender

to the impossible heaviness of it all and to the virile torrent

whose force envelopes all that remains real about you

and you slip and you  die one of those thousand deaths

that you desperately defy with work and prayer and selfless love

August Rain

Today there is only that incessant drizzle
Humming like a pain you've learned to live with.
Nothing lives or moves in all that gray
That seems as infinite and victorious as failure.
Others would surely brave the miniscule drops
Sharp like needles that prick in a thousand places.
You can only stay inside unmoving and unmoved
Like a patient who knows too acutely and waits.
On a day like this the dance of your soul ceased
As though all the music of the world faded.
You shrivelled into what you are: stoic and gray
Now staring out the window forgetful of better days.

Untitled 2

"You had me when our eyes met and you simply said hello
And we just knew it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship
You even told me eventually that I did complete you
And I declared that you make me want to become a better man
Now all we've got is a failure to communicate
And I never know anymore really if you talkin' to me
So you said you're mad as hell, you're not gonna take it anymore
And I began saying to no one in particular, Houston, we have a problem
We've both felt for a while now that we're not in Kansas anymore
And I wouldn't want to be in a club that'll have me for a member either
Now you're gone I so want to say, frankly, I don't give a damn
And console myself with the thought that we'll always have Paris
But the fact of the matter is I couldn't handle the truth
And while love remains I can no longer force my twisted soul into your life
So now I only say hello to my little friends at the bar
And I've learned that there ain't no truth, all there is is bullshit
One cannot always depend on the kindness of strangers
And pardon my vulgarity here, I just can't snap out of it
For without my precious, all I see are dead people"

Untitled 1

Philosophers have argued incessantly
whether a tree that falls in the forest
that nobody hears makes a sound.
My mind's arms are not large enough
to embrace such anodyne puzzles.
But sometimes I silently wonder too
if the words that pour out of me
like weighty drops of blue rain
from sad elephantish clouds
move and make any sound as they fall
into the green growing spaces of your absence.
These words that articulate only poorly
that mix of the hues of  my crimson heart
echo in my head as they escape my mouth,
and as I absentmindedly address them to you.
I don't know, I don't know
if they are like trained pigeons
that faithfully find their home.
Maybe they're more like a stray red balloon
or the weeping white wind,
or violet amnesiac ghosts,
or the prayers of a dark soul.
All of them nobody's.
Wandering about without reason.
Irredeemably lost to the world.

Moving Boxes

Immobile brown boxes keep the books and pictures sealed in
It took some time to sort them all and make the decision
As to which are to be taken and which to be left behind
In the end what did it matter anyway which ones belonged to whom
What was crucial was the very movement of dividing
All that precious flotsam into separate properties
That is, the act of drawing a deep definite invisible line
The gift of a disaster, a fault in previously shared space and time
Throwing "us" into the past, made irrevocably obsolete
Putting me "here," which has come to mean "not with you"
Now mine is this place and these things formerly ours unto infinity
As I bring out my possessions one by one out of a treasured box
Slowly--for mourning rituals are necessarily sober sombre sustained
I imagine myself taking out piece by piece all the evil we had to bear:
The shouts and angry words hurled to hit already hurting hearts
The bulky bricks of the tall walls of egoistic indifference 
The promises made, broken like limbs, and repaired into monstrosities
The lies that grew bolder as they multiplied like poison weed
Then I look in at the very bottom and see that like with "us" nothing remains
As though time was a goon scamming us all along till we went broke
As though the places we have occupied were nothing but pure blackholes
As though there never was, in the beginning, anything that was beautiful and good.

Getting to know each other: fears part 2

Getting to know each other: fears part 1

You had me at 'hello'

Yes

One summer day a voice reached me
From a distance beyond vision
Somebody suddenly sung-shouted
Angrily, desperately, longingly (?)
"I will wait, I will wait for you!"
That tore my eyes away from my book
To look at the trees tickled by the wind
Hover over aging brick houses silent and reserved
And move beyond them to meet the rare embracing blueness.
My lips nearly curled into one of those
Smiles actors wear at the end hopelessly sad films
As other songs crowded my shrinking mind.
Then the voice erupted again and proclaimed
With no less conviction and desire and rage
"I will wait, I will wait for you!"
My book was already shut as I replied
Calmly, deliberately, in a whisper: Yes.

The Shy One

With painful judiciousness he does not dare meet your gaze

Should you catch a glimpse of his desires, robust but futile,

Poorly camouflaged by the controlled neutrality of his voice,

The measured distance of his body and his impeccable civility.

Like a kleptomaniac, he greedily steals glances at your sacred face

And the inviting movements of those forbidden lips he burns to kiss

To his memory he commits the dance of lights in your eyes,

The intoxicating music of every uttered word, the magic of your smiles.

His loot he brings with him into the darkness of night,

To be stored in the heavy chest of memory and unattainable dreams

--home to that romantic but aging heart, long abandoned by happiness and courage

And constantly gnawed at by ever-growing emptiness and despair.

The Drunk

He may stumble upon you on a dimly-lighted street,

Zigzagging his way to temporary bliss or accumulating grief.

Lugging a dear bottle that is both half-empty and half-full,

He may suddenly approach you in profuse friendliness,

Stare at you searchingly with the blood-shot eyes of one lost,

Or pumped up with that kind of courage only alcohol gives, pick a fight,

Or not see you at all, busy as he is having a rare honest conversation with himself.

This is a man who, for now, wears his intoxicated heart on his sleeve.

More—he becomes a veritable artist of his muddled inner life.

He can reflect his sense of self in the shards of smashed windows,

Wax poetic in the recitation of the epic, incredible feats of youth,

Sing with the sublime happy confidence unattainable when sober,

Deliver a monologue about past failed loves and the doomed present one,

Or with his tears paint the inconsolable regrets of a man reduced to this

For a moment there he might scare you and you despise him (what a low life).

Maybe you pity him too—but rest assured there is some respite from the eternal return,

In deep and dreamless sleep and flashes of clarity, gifts of a smoke and bitter black coffee.

We Buy Books

We buy books that perhaps we'd never get to read
they will stand patiently on our shelves
shiny spines competing with one another for attention
like siblings arguing over some silly thing
demanding that the parent decide who's right
a book will sometimes even have to live
with the fact of an unwanted identical twin
bought with a sense of urgency, but by mistake
or with every good intention given as a present
and because as with chocolate or sex
you simply can't resist getting more
they will steadily grow in number (and you will lose count)
until, with a heavy heart, you'd have to put some on the floor
even pile half a dozen on the water tank in the toilet
on the TV and the PC, on things that should be less important
Yet most of them will be ignored
--and you will often say to yourself, only for the time being--
just as the beautiful things of everyday
like the blueness of the sky, the sound of rain,
or the hesitant smile of a perfect stranger
go unnoticed, consigned to the periphery of a life
that has been devoted to men and matters of consequence
or just like friends you left somewhere long ago
present to you now only as warm sentiments
as blurry faces reminding you of good times, good things
We try our best to get back to them
to those books that surprisingly spoke to us
of some of the thoughts, feelings and longings
we sometimes couldn't really tell apart
or articulate clearly enough or even admit we had
We know we won't stop buying more books
for though we do not always succeed
in getting to make and waste time on them
at least they'd still be definitely around
when the children no longer seek our opinion
when our friends return the favor of forgetting
when men and matters of consequence rule on our insignificance
to ensure a sense of presence other than one's own